The Synthesis of Yoga - Super school Auroville - The Synthesis of Yoga 105

There is second part that I want to introduce which is very important for the practice of Yoga. This is connected with the shastra of yoga. The first aid is shastra. It is the knowledge of the truths, principles, powers and processes that govern the realisation. I told you that we should imagine that we are in a pit and we want to come out of it. This is the basic idea of all yoga. We may not know that we are in a pit; many people don’t know that they are in a pit, but yoga becomes meaningful when we know that we are in a pit. How we have gone into a pit, how we can lift ourselves out of the pit that is the truths, principles, powers and processes that govern the realisation. Mother has said that when you have a feeling that wherever you look around you feel barred, like a bird in a cage, wherever it turns it looks at the sky but it is barred, it can’t fly, it is arrested. So whenever you feel that you are barred and there is a great feeling in you to fly that means that you are ready for conscious yoga.  Everybody is doing yoga in any case. Unknowingly we are all trying to fly from the cage but when you really feel that you are barred then you realise that you are now fit for yoga. You want to fly, you want to be free. Again I’ll give you a Sanskrit word which is very important: mumukshutva — desire to be free that is the meaning. The word moksha means liberation. The desire to be liberated is called mumukshutva — the desire to have moksha. You need to be free. You desire to be free. Why because you feel bound, when you feel that you are in a cage, that you are barred, then there is a desire to be free.

The question is: how did you get into bondage? How did you get into the cage? Such a cage from which you cannot escape. The answer to this question gives you the truth of yogic realisation. If you know how you got bound then you will know also how to be free. There is only one word that you should remember in this connection; it will give you the key to the whole yoga. That word is: exclusive concentration of consciousness. This is the word which takes you through the whole of process of yoga. It is a key. We are bound because of exclusive concentration of consciousness. I gave the story of Yusuf, when he was resting he could have thought of hundred and one things, but no! He was exclusively concentrated upon the box. Even while trying to forget about it he was returning back to the box. What is in the box? He could not be free from this question. It is one simple example of exclusive concentration of consciousness. He had such a concentration on the box that everything else was excluded — therefore exclusive. He came back again and again and again to the box. What is in the box? We are all barred; we are all bound because we are all concentrated upon our small little field.

If you examine yourself you will find that we are all the time gazing outward. What captures you all the time are the sounds, the sights, the smells and the touches that you have. We are constantly attracted by them. Again I give you a Sanskrit word which is very important — bahirmukha. Mukha means towards, oriented towards. Bahir means outward. Bahirmukha means oriented towards outside. We are so much exclusively concentrated upon outside that we don’t even suspect that there is something inside. So the first word of yoga is: there is inside. As long as you are occupied with the outside you are bound to feel barred, you cannot escape. You are in the pit and you cannot come out of it because you go on round and round and there is no solution there. The solution is above and you can come out only at the top. You have to turn into what is called antarmukha. Antarmukha means oriented towards inside.

The first step of yoga is to turn inward. The truth is that we are turned outward so the truth of yoga is you turn inward. You lead an inner life where normally we are leading an external life. Then you begin to lead an inner life. There is no yoga siddhi without inner life. You have to live inwardly. Our concentration now is outward. Yoga means you turn inward. Just turn within. In the beginning when you turn within you find almost darkness or nothing, emptiness. It is only the first preliminary experience. But when you do it again and again… go on, you will find that there is so much inside which you did not even suspect earlier. The discovery of that is the discovery of the yoga. Yoga is the discovery of the inner realms of existence. There are realms and realms, so much to be known, so much to be learnt. So you might say that the device of yoga, the process is to turn inward. That is the only process: turn inward. But then, there is a further process. Turn inward and connect again with the outward. Merely turning inward you might lose what is outside that is also a reality. We should not lose either. But you will find the more you turn inward the greater is the power you gain for controlling the outside. This is the minimum, elementary process of yoga. Turn inward and then connect the inward with the outward, control and master outward with inward so that you are concentrated inward so as to master the outward concentration. You develop what is called integral concentration. That is another important word: integral concentration. When you are able to concentrate integrally that is siddhi. That is yoga siddhi, the perfection that comes by the practice of yoga. This attainment of integral concentration is the subject matter of the entire Synthesis of Yoga. The whole book — how to attain integral concentration. In the first chapter of The Life Divine we have heard the word Supermind. And one of the definitions of Supermind is: it is a power of integral concentration.

Now you have basically everything that needs to be known and you don’t need any further lessons at all. If you practice those five things — satya, ahimsa, brahmacharya, aparigraha, asteya, — and if you turn inward so as to achieve integral concentration, all that you need to know is known. In fact this is all that I want to say in my very first talk to you on this subject. If you were living in the time of the Upanishads I would have said: “Now come after two years. We have finished. You have now got everything that needs to be told at this stage. Practice it for two years then we shall meet after.” But because we are living in an age where books are available — if the books were not available it would be enough — we shall go through the process of books.